Chautala finally realises, power comes at a price

CHANDIGARH, MARCH 26: Populism comes with a price and Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala is discovering that now. Having allegedly...

CHANDIGARH, MARCH 26: Populism comes with a price and Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala is discovering that now. Having allegedly incited farmers to refrain from paying their electricity bills in the heat of electioneering, Chautala has made a turnaround. He now wants farmers to clear their dues and has directed his civil and police officers to give them a deadline of April 30.

But it’s not going to be an easy task. The Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam (HVPN) has identified 650 "problem villages" in Jind, Kaithal, Bhiwani, Jhajjar, Hisar, Rohtak and some districts where the defaulters have piled on dues amounting to a staggering Rs 230 crore. The farm sector alone accounts for almost half of this. The HVPN is learnt to have supplied the list of defaulting villages to officials.

The districts of Jind, Bhiwani and Kaithal appear to be the worst-affected, with Jind having 177 villages notorious for not paying power bills. In Bhiwani, there are over 210 defaulting villages, with Bijna, Kadma, Mandoli, Gothra, Talwani and Nakipur leading the list.

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Kaithal district has more than 22,000 habitual defaulters in 80 problem villages. In Kurukshetra, there are 78 such villages, with another 54 in Hisar district and 87 in Jhajjar district.

The farmers, who eagerly waited for Chautala’s return to power, do not seem to be in a mood to give in. Ishwar Malik of Khurana village in Kaithal district has not paid his bills for tubewell and domestic connections in the past four years. He owes Rs 2 lakh to the HVPN. The threat of power being disconnected angers him.

There are 1,000 other farmers with total dues amounting to more than Rs 1.5 crore. They have been threatening to take on anyone who comes to their village for collecting the amounts or cutting off their connections. "Chautala had promised to write off our dues," is the refrain in this village.

"It is a tough situation. Whenever attempts have been made to talk to them about their dues or disconnect supply, we have ended up with a law and order problem," admits a senior power department official.

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The Bansi Lal government had threatened to snap connections of the defaulters in 1998-99, but never carried out the threat. The government then tried to put pressure on the defaulters by refusing to repair their transformers. It did not make any difference – the defaulters brought technicians from the Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board to do the job.

Last December, the HVPN, which was facing a tight financial situation, again asked the defaulters to "pay their dues or face disconnection". The response was lukewarm, forcing the authorities to snap connections.

But soon politics took precedence over business and the INLD government, which was preparing for the assembly elections, decided to spare the defaulters and restricted the drive to municipal areas only.

As it turns out, he only postponed the inevitable.